Analysts say Trump, Congress can help GOP expand in Illinois

The result of this year’s November election was arguably the most surprising event of 2016.

Aside from President-elect
Donald Trump's winning the election after a brutal campaign season, many were
shocked that former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost key states
including Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Patrick Hughes, co-founder at the Illinois Opportunity
Project, said Clinton’s loss indicates that the Republican Party is gaining
ground across the country.

“You look around us, you see the blue
wall crumbling,” Hughes said during a recent episode of “Illinois Rising,”
a radio show hosted by Dan Proft. “Hillary Clinton didn’t
even campaign in Wisconsin. She thought it was in the bag and it came tumbling
down and went for Trump.”

Trump may have won over voters in some states
that are traditionally blue states, but Illinois was not one of them. With Cook and six other counties holding 65 percent of the state’s population, Chicagoland voters dwarf any attempt by downstate voters to turn the state red.

“There’s
something going on in that corridor that’s different, than say, in the suburbs
of Milwaukee, Wisconsin or in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania or even
Philadelphia, where Trump got hammered,” Hughes said.

Clinton had the advantage in Chicago going
into the election because she is a native of the city, but Republicans need to
take a deeper look at why Trump didn’t do well in Chicago suburbs, Hughes added.

“There’s something going on here, and it’s
different from the rest of the country,” he said. “And if Republicans want to
take back the [state] House -- and we picked up seats in the House and we picked up
seats in the Senate -- but if we want to take control of the House, which is
ultimately the goal … to get (Illinois House Speaker Michel Madigan (D-Chicago)) out of
there, that riddle has got to be solved.”

Without solving the “riddle” and finding
out why those areas continue to vote for Democrats despite them destroying
the state’s economy, Hughes thinks Chicagoland will continue to “kill” the Republican vote in
downstate Illinois.

“That question has to be answered, and
I think the traditional excuses that Republicans have used in the past don’t
apply,” he said. “One of the things we used to say all the time was, ‘We are
out-resourced. Madigan out-spends us 4 to 1, or whatever. We had resource parity
at a minimum this year with [GOP Gov. Bruce] Rauner and without side groups…so that’s not the
reason. There’s a messaging issue there.”

Republicans have no time to spare with
the 2018 state elections on the horizon. But perhaps a Trump presidency and the
new Congress may help boost Republican support in Illinois and prove to be
beneficial.

In a column for the Chicago Tribune, Diana Rickert, vice president of communications at the Illinois Policy
Institute, said one of the ways the incoming Congress can help Illinois is by
turning federal dollars for education into scholarships for children.

“Six years ago, Illinois considered
allowing state money for education to follow students to any school they
choose, private or public,” she said. “Parents whose children were assigned
to the lowest-performing public schools in Chicago would have been given the
opportunity to use that money to send their children elsewhere. But the measure
failed, and the effort has not been revived.”

What has happened instead is that educational
options have narrowed in the state. An example of this focuses on the Chicago Teachers
Union’s latest contract, which bans the city from increasing the number of its charter
schools, Rickert said.

She continued by adding that converting federal dollars to scholarships
could mean Chicago Public Schools students would receive approximately $2,200
each, while the typical student elsewhere in Illinois receives $1,100.

“It's not a lot of money, and of course
a state voucher program would yield thousands more dollars per student —
perhaps enough to cover the tuition at many nonpublic schools,” Rickert said. “But we don't
have time to wait for the Illinois legislature; kids need that money now, and
federal dollars offer a good starting point.”

The second thing Congress could do is amend
federal bankruptcy law so that states with massive public pension debt, like
Illinois, can file for bankruptcy and recognize taxpayers as a “party of
interest,” according to Rickert.

“Every family in Illinois is on the
hook for tens of thousands of dollars in pension costs that we didn't have a
say in, and which far surpass what we in the private sector will ever have
access to,” she said. “It's also hard to stomach that the state keeps promising
new pension benefits to teachers, state employees and other government workers
when we know full well we can't afford to pay for them.”

This does not, however, automatically
mean that bankruptcy is the right vehicle to get Illinois’ finances back on
track, but Rickert believes it's better than doing nothing about the problem.

“Perhaps the option of bankruptcy will
spur opponents of reform to agree to a solution outside of bankruptcy court,” she said. “If
not, then bankruptcy can help Illinois get a handle on its finances the way the
same way it helped American Airlines, major cities across the country and
millions of Americans.”

Finally, appointing a U.S. Supreme
Court justice who will end forced unionization in government jobs would alter the way unions operate in Illinois, according to Rickert.

Most states give government workers the
freedom to choose whether they would like to become members of a union and pay
membership fees toward the union, she explained. Illinois, however, does
not provide that choice and forces state workers to join their workplace union -- even if they are unhappy with the union and do not condone its actions.

“Many speculate that public-sector 'right to work' would have become law of the land were it not for the
untimely death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February of [last] year,” Rickert
said. “Trump should appoint, and the U.S. Senate should approve, a U.S. Supreme
Court justice who will rule in favor of public-sector right-to-work laws. State
workers in Illinois deserve the same workplace rights as their counterparts in
Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin.”

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